Fibers into fashions: Monsanto Textiles;

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The clothes on your back might have started out as a tiny synthetic fiber a traction, of the size of one of the hairs on your head. A major producer of these man-made fibers is the Monsanto Tex-tiles Company, an operating unit of Monsanto Company. The latter is a client of the H&S St. Louis office. At Monsanto., fiber production is just one aspect of a company whose products touch on just about every phase of our daily lives. And in a fast-paced world of changing lifestyles, Monsanto is constantly search-ing for new ideas that will help it make fibers that can better answer the needs of modern consumers.
Synthetic fibers, fibers produced through a chemical process, first came into use during the 1930s. Shortly after the Second World War. the Monsanto Chemical Company began investigating the possibilities for mass production of synthetics. In 1949 Monsanto joined forces with the American Viscose Cor-poration to form Chemstrand Corpo-ration, which soon became one of the world's largest producers of chemical textile fibers. Today Monsanto manu-factures four types of synthetic fiber — Acrilan acrylic, nylon, polyester and modacrylic These fibers are turned into yarns and fabric by Monsanto customers for use in apparel, hosiery, carpeting, home furnishing| and tire cord
One person at Monsanto Textiles in New York, women's-sweater merchan-diser Nancy Schaeffer, has developed an unusual merchandising technique that takes into account the concerns of garment manufacturers and designers, as well as those of the buying public, in liber production. In order to demon-strate what Monsanto Textiles can do for the sweater industry, Nancy became
merchandiser, designer, knitter and promotion wnter wrapped up in one She has the fibers made into yams and then knits the yarn info clothing she has designed herself. "By making yarns into actual garments." Nancy explains, "we can give the clothing manufacturers a better idea of how they can be used."
A graduate of Iowa State University, Nancy joined Monsanto in 1974 after receiving a B.S. degree in fashion mer-chandising and design Her first six months with Monsanto were spent in a training program at the Decatur, Alabama plant. "The laboratory in the Decatur plant," Nancy recalls, "is where experimentation with new fibers takes place. While I was there I was able to get a closeup view of the testing procedures used in the development of fibers and yarns. This firsthand knowledge of pro-duction techniques was very valuable to me when 1 came to New York as a women's sweater merchandiser, because it gave me a better idea of exactly what can be done with fiber"
Nancy Schaeffer shows a garment manu-facturer a sweater outfit she knitted with yarn made from Monsanto fiber Nancy designs and then knits garments with a computerized machine in order to give clothing designers a better idea of what can be accomplished • with various types of yarns
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